Who promotes wellness?

It has been my experience that more places don’t promote wellness, than do. We live in a culture that sells us unhealthy choices everywhere we look. Driving from my town to the next, there are multiple billboards advertising casinos, cheap cigarettes and fast food. We are bombarded with commercials on television and computer ads selling all kinds of pharmaceutical drugs and products promising us beauty, health, athleticism, youth and vigor.

These ads sell us unhealthy products with healthy lifestyle images. Wellness, as a concept sells lots of stuff, but wellness, as a reality, is for the most part not promoted by the stuff it sells.

So, who promotes wellness?

I’ve found that when, as an individual, one chooses to explore wellness, and opens up to the possibility of changing life patterns and making apparently unpopular choices, a whole underground offthe-radar culture is there.

Every place I’ve lived, from Kona, Hawaii, to Chicago, Illinois, from San Francisco, California, to Taos, New Mexico; and most places I’ve visited across all the USA and through Europe and India, have a natural food and herb store as well as ways to procure organic food. These stores can be sources of abundant information and have resources that promote wellness.

Standing alongside all our wonderful medical institutions and hospitals are all sorts of alternative doctors’ offices and schools that promote wellness in addition to treating sickness. Ultimately, it is our job to promote wellness within ourselves. We each have to be willing to go against the grain of society, just a little bit, and educate ourselves and open our minds to new experiences.

My grandmother’s pain from a hard case of shingles was helped with acupuncture. My own stubborn injuries were cracked open towards healing from an appointment that included counseling, flower remedies and purple-light laser therapy when conventional treatment didn’t help me. When traveling by camper across 46 states in the USA, we went to a music concert and discovered the musician was selling a book identifying organic food stores in all 50 states. The book is called, “The Tofu Tollbooth,” by Dar Williams.

We all promote wellness every day when we brush our teeth, spend time with loved ones, pray and meditate and keep ourselves clean. Promoting wellness is not hard, but requires making conscious choices. It is not automatic. If we step out of the stream where society’s current pushes us, an entirely different landscape of possibility, that promotes wellness, will become available.